How should I approach this potential mentor?

[Anonymous]

Hey guys, this is my first post and it looks like it's gonna be quite a long one. So here we go:

I'm 18 years old and I love computer programming. I started learning from a young age using the internet and I got reasonably proficient. At the moment I know a handful of languages and I've finished a few projects. (Including one where I made a games website designed to not get blocked at school ;p) I have a lot to learn but I'm still going. At the moment i'm working on making a tech demo for an old game console. It's the sort of thing people might not be able to do until mid way through university.

Anyway, enough bragging.. So I met a friend of a friend recently and found out he also wanted to do computer science at uni. We got talking and he ended up telling me about a guy that went to his school that was a really good programmer. He could do stuff like change his grades, remotely crash the school computer system so he didn't have to hand in homework etc... He ended up getting kicked out of school but he has an unconditional offer to study CS at one of the best universities in my country next year.

This guy sounds insane. Next to him I look like a fucking retard. So this could be a golden opportunity for me to really up my game in terms of programming. I read Chase's article on finding a mentor and I don't know which route I should take and how I should go about doing it.

I've never interacted with this guy irl so to start talking to him, I'd have to send a facebook message... I also can't think of any value I could offer him either. I assume he probably gets people saying, "omg teach me how to hack lol" very often so I don't know how I should go about this. I guess he probably doesn't get to meet many people his age that are at least somewhat proficient programmers, but his skill level is still way above mine.

Do you guys have any advice? Insights? Or Tips?

Thanks,
Jazz.

 

[ray_zorse]

Well, hmm. Not to downplay the importance of mentoring but these days with all the information you need readily available on the Internet... you can probably level up by yourself right?

I couldn't count the number of people I have mentored only to find that they did not really want to put the hard yards in... all too often the idea is to attach to someone who has already solved the problems and get canned recipes, doesn't work.

What are you really after from this mentor?

I suppose the best thing you could hope for is someone like the mathematician Paul Erdos, reputedly one of his uncanny skills was to "get" where a student or colleague was at mathematically and set a problem that was neither too easy nor too hard for them to solve. So they'd level up quickly.

If this kind of expertise is going... sure, grab it.

But, given the bulk of the work is in solving the problem, not setting it... you may as well just be disciplined and motivated and set your own problems, that way you'll always be interested in the outcome... if it's too easy solve it quickly, if it's too hard bash your head against it for a while and move on.

So you want to be a computer hacker right... well let's look at this from first principles... computer systems are designed to respond only to those who authenticate themselves... so you can either steal someone's authentication (e.g. social engineering, ring them up and game them) or look for design flaws (e.g. read the security advisories of common software such as Apache)... once you get inside somewhere it will prob get easier if you're opportunistic as further keys/info will be lying around in people's home directories and so forth.

Lots of specialized knowledge will be needed... so there is a buffer overflow leading to a code injection hack... better get out your x86 assembly skills... and a copy of gdb... hope you've got a linux system lying around. In the exact same flavour your target is running. With the same security settings... oh the stack segment is randomized? Surely some geek has developed a counter strategy...

What else are you gonna need?

Time. Loads of it.

Hmm see where I'm going here? Computer hacking may be very romantic... and achievements such as changing grades, very desirable (if a little risky)... but the overall process involves years of work for basically no tangible gain. If the knowledge gained was worthwhile to you... well you wouldn't be here, haha you'd be downing a bucketload of coffee and coding your latest exploit, would you not?

Above is the reason why I never really put any serious effort or time into hacking (although ironically I do have a conviction on record for unauthorized access to a computer system but this was actually just a harmless prank that caused offence)... and you shouldn't either. Spend your time and resources turning yourself into a high value man.

I recommend to check out the articles about passive income streams and Chase's recent post on rage-to-mastery.

cheers, Ray